My Heart and My Honour
by squelchything
Summary: Gregor dealing with power, what his father was, and growing up. Set during the closing part of "The Vor Game." Mentions of rape and torture, but rather less graphic than the books. Contains traces of Miles. Is ridiculously long.
1. Part I: Aral

The _Ariel_'s shuttle accelerated. Gregor curled back in his seat, trying to avoid the attention of his omnipresent ImpSec guard. They looked as though they expected him to sublime into thin air at any minute, and Ungari was still muttering about smart-assed mutinous mutants when he thought Gregor couldn't hear.

The tactical VDU was currently displaying a pretty rotating mock-up of the _Prince Serg_ on the shuttle's approach readouts. Now there was irony--who had chosen the name? Gregor clearly remembered looking--well, drooling--at the technical specs with Count Aral, and Cordelia had made some pithy remark about men and warships, but he couldn't remember ever approving the name. Not that it mattered to anyone but him; an unlucky ship could be made so by her name, but it had to be widely perceived as unlucky.

The comm unit crackled to life. "Shuttle, there. What shuttle's that?"

The crew of the _Prince Serg_ already knew exactly what the shuttle was--its IFF beacon was broadcasting its pennant number in all directions, and Ungari had informed them they were coming, no taking chances here--but what the verbal challenge really meant was "Do you have aboard an officer we will have to receive with ceremony?"

The ImpSec sergeant beside the pilot returned, "Fleet," in the hushed tone reserved for death and Emperors. _Ceremony, boys. This is the big one._ Gregor sighed, adjusting back from a scruffy crew of mercenaries who addressed their commander as "Yo, Admiral."

His arrival on board the _Serg_ was positively casual by Barrayaran standardsany ship under Aral Vorkosigan's command wasn't going to waste time on useless pompbut the ship's ImpSec contingent met him in the hangar and double-filed after him up to the bridge, all shiny boots and sharp salutes and general spectacular over-enthusiasm. Did they think he was going to jump out of a window here?

They passed a team of techs working at some conduits behind the bulkhead panelling, who dropped their tools and came to attention as Gregor approached. Repairs already? No, this was building work on the run. _I hope the guns are finished_. The techs ripped off textbook salutes, then realised that Gregor wasn't in uniform, and looked embarrassed. He acknowledged, feeling a certain wistfulness for the brief time when all he'd only had to worry about light fittings, and not an imminent Cetagandan war.

The bridge. Gregor swallowed, aware of the disadvantage inherent in the fact that his Prime Minister and greatest military strategist was also the man who had brought him up. So far he'd managed to avoid real-time contact with his Admiral, apart from a brief vid call which had included various Hub military. This was the first opportunity for explanations. _I screwed up, Uncle Aral. Bad._

Tac room. He managed to get his entourage to stay outside, but they made so much noise the whole crew could probably hear them. The door was so new that it still had its protective layer of plastic.

Count Aral was standing over a console with a junior officer, whom he dismissed before turning and saying formally, "Sire." He wore his dress greens as unconsciously as a second skin, but, more than any overt comment, this renewed Gregor's uncomfortable awareness of the Dendarii greys he still wore.

"Admiral Vorkosigan." Yes, in this context, most surely the correct title. Sharp grey eyes scanned Gregor from top to toe.

"You all right, boy?"

Gregor nodded. The Count stepped forward and gave him a swift, hard hug. Even after eight years or so, it still seemed wrong to Gregor that he was the taller.

"You may count yourself lucky you're too big now to be given a good shaking," Aral said, but there was water in his eyes.

Gregor squirmed inwardly. "I was drunk. It seemed like a good idea at the time." He paused, feeling again the stirrings of anger at being lied to. "There was a reason: no Emperor might be better for Barrayar than the wrong one."

The Count paled slightly, his mouth tightening. _Hah. He knows why_, Gregor thought, and then with a pang of contrition, _He looks old_.

"I'm sorry," he added. "I expect I'll be saying that a lot from now on."

"Mmm. Simon's just about eaten his fingernails to the shoulder now, I should think. He's had Alys weeping in his office, and Drou threatening to have his head if ImpSec didn't turn you up. Or the perpetrator's." He grimaced. "With Cordelia and Drou, you know they're capable of that. Vide Vordarian."

Gregor shifted his weight to his right leg. By the sound of this, his formidable collection of honorary aunts would be out for his blood when they heard the true story. It was going to be a scaled-up version of that time with the tank.

The uncomfortable silence seemed likely to last, so Gregor fell back on essentials.

"Did you get the Vervani's latest news from the hot side, sir? The spirit was willing, but the competence was...um."

Aral opened a hand in the direction of the tac display. The conversation still seemed to be up to Gregor.

"I brought some people. Aslunders. They were asking to be impressed, so..." Gregor waved a hand at the universal shininess of the _Prince Serg_. "They're getting on great with the Vervani, now, but they're a bit iffy about going into battle led by Barrayarans--their fleet's in transit across the Hub, by the way. They started out chasing Miles, but were left behind by events. By the time it gets here, I hope the Aslunders will be persuaded. The Vervani, on the other hand, will sell their souls to anyone who'll get the Cetas off their necks."

Count Aral looked surprised and--it _was_--impressed, yes! "Are we there, then? How did you manage to get co-operation so fast?"

"Variations on the theme of 'rescue' and 'Cetagandans'." Gregor's mouth curled uncontrollably upwards. "And careful avoidance of any mention of Komarr or Escobar." Not that he felt much like discussing Escobar himself at the minute, either.

Aral gave him an answering glint of grim amusement. "And all in that grey rig, too."

"This," Gregor swept a hand along the seam of his trousers, "is now the uniform of an official Barrayaran force. Not that they know it."

"There's a set of your dress greens in my cabin," Aral informed him dryly. "I suggest you wear them when the Polians arrive. Their navy's out in force behind us. I doubt they left much in their own system."

"Good. Mmm. This isn't a Barrayaran invasion, it's a defence by interested parties against an unprovoked attack. The Hegen, uh--"

"Alliance, I think. What about Miles's lot, how long are they going to be able to hold out?"

A muscle jumped in the Counts jaw, the only visible sign of the tension between the father and the Admiral. The underlying sick fear that had been driving Gregor since he had heard about the Cetagandans sharpened. A dozen horrible things could have happened to Miles and Elena by this time. If the Cetas came piling through the wormhole, _now_...

Perhaps he had Miles's and Elena's blood on his hands already. _You will undoubtedly have someone's, before this ends. It's not any less your responsibility because you don't know whose yet._ He took a breath, trying for some of Count Aral's control.

"He seems able to manage the Dendarii. The Vervani are trying to protect the planet and the Hub wormhole, so they're pretty stretched. The Rangersthe rival mercsthey might go for a stab in the back, but they'd have trouble finding it for long enough to get the knife in. That's why we'reMiles is using them as a shield. The lot of them, I'd sayone pass, two at most, is all that they can take. Though that depends on what the Vervani decide to do, of course."

He realised that he was starting to babble, Miles-fashion. Admiral Vorkosigan didn't need to be told basic facts about wormhole strategy. He added, watching the bleak look on Aral's face, "Sorry. I wanted to go with Miles, but he wouldn't have me."

"Quite right of him. At least I have one of you safe."

The flat grey feeling of being overprotected settled over Gregor again. He could feel the constraints that had held him down all his life tightening, enclosing him as effectively as battle armour. Escaping them had been a bad idea, and lessening them seemed impossible.

Count Aral moved aside to look at something blinking on a screen beside him. "The Polians should be rendezvousing in three hours. I take it that's the Aslunders out there. If we can all get sorted out..." His face became abstracted, calculating. "You should stand off in the Hub after we jump, just in case. That Illyrican cruiser that Miles borrowed--"

"Oh, no," Gregor said. He had been half-expecting this, but he still felt a swoop of disappointment in his stomach. "Not left behind again. There isn't even anything useful I can do this time."

Count Aral looked up, frowning. "What, were you planning to jump with us? Into the middle of a wormhole slugging match?"

"Real Vor rulers should be military commanders. What honour is there in leading from the rear?" _And my honour is already in pieces._

The Count abandoned the tac display, his mouth turned down, apprehensive. "Gregor, see sense! Your death at this point would be disastrous."

"This tac room will be the safest place in the system," Gregor argued. "Nothing that has the _Serg_'s legs will be able to touch her, weapon-wise."

In another minute he would be begging. _Barrayaran compulsions_, the analytical part of his mind said, before being overwhelmed.

Count Aral shook his head slowly, mouth tightening. He looked at Gregor with pity, which made him feel worse. "I'm sorry, Gregor, I don't want to take that chance. The unforeseen is the default, in war."

The old familiar frustration welled up in Gregor. The world closed and contracted, as an image of his immediate future formed in his mind's eye: stuck in limbo, waiting uselessly for news. "Anyone would think I had no brains or courage! What other Emperor of Barrayar was consistently left behind with, with the baggage train?"

"Well, some of them did have the strategic talents of the average mule," the Count murmured.

Gregor waved this sally aside. "You let Miles take ten times the risks, you always did! At least if we lose gravity I won't break my bones into five hundred pieces!"

He knew it was a low blow. Aral's face went still. "Miles--is my own responsibility to risk," he said quietly.

"And I am my own responsibility. I'm not a child any longer, sir!" _Then why are you acting like one, kiddo?_ Gregor felt his paradigms shifting, again, but this time it was a heady mixture of terror and adrenaline, like learning how to dive. Or fly.

The room and the Count's figure seemed very focused, diamond-sharp and bright. Gregor straightened to parade-ground attention.

"I am jumping to Vervain in the _Prince Serg_," he said levelly. "I request and require that this be so. Admiral Vorkosigan."

He kept looking Aral in the eyes, wondering what he had just done. It was more frightening than falling from the balcony. A rapidly changing sequence of emotions showed on the Count's face: startlement, anger, conflict...gratification? It settled finally on what looked like wry respect.

"You're right, boy, you have grown up," he breathed, looking like someone coming round from stunning. He gave a formal bow, said crisply, "As you will, my liege," and turned away.

Gregor stumbled backwards into a console, feeling as though he'd jumped to solid ground and found it to be water. _Is this what Miles's 'forward momentum' is like? Is this what he feels like all the time?_ "Count Aral?" he managed to croak.

"Yes?"

"Istill need my strategist and admiral."

The Count smiled a little. "Of course."

--

Gregor hitched one knee across the workstation chair. Unfortunately, the back wasn't tall enough to let him loll his head against it, as he badly wanted to do.

"Medals for the wounded," he said, thinking aloud. The _Prince Serg_, having the most up-to-date medbay in the fleet, had received all the worst triage cases. That knowledge didn't do much to help the shivery feeling in Gregor's solar plexus, though. "Pensions, of course, all the usual stuff. Or perhaps medals for everyone? Considering that it's the first war most of the current generation has fought in. And the last, I hope." The shivers grew to a whole-body shudder.

"Amen to that," said Count Aral. Gregor tipped his head back to look at him.

"Hey, if everyone gets a medal, that'll include me." He grinned, half in disbelief, that he'd _done_ the thing, he'd faced his battle and come through.

Aral's gaze fell on the display of glitter on the breast of Gregor's tunic, which he'd been too tired to even undo yet. The Count raised an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean. A real one."

"I suspect your decision in this matter may not be entirely impersonal," the Count said gravely.

"So, sir? What do you think, your personal interest in the question being purely nominal?" Gregor started wrestling his way out of the green tunic.

"Another one for the desk drawer?" Aral said. "Miles is a little too old to play with them now."

"Ah. I see a slight hitch there. Ensign Vorkosigan can't exactly be rewarded for something Admiral Naismith pulled off."

The corner of Aral's mouth twitched slightly. "Poor Miles."

Gregor pulled his arms free of his tunic and hung it over the back of the chair. "Then there's the Dendarii. I'm sure they'd rather have pay than medals, especially if they're in as bad a state as they look. They took the first hit for us, after all."

"I can hear Simon's budget creaking already."

"I don't think it'll stretch that far. Damn, finance. I hate finance." Gregor scrubbed his hands wearily over his hair. "I think I can do it out of my own pocket, and extract the money from the Council later. I don't expect that that'll be a major problem. The Counts are all going to love this little war, when they hear about it."

"Well, not Count Vorbretten. Lord Vorbretten was killed."

Gregor winced. "That'll just about kill the old man, I should think. Poor René. And Lady Vorbretten and the girls."

_At least Ren's father wasn't a sadistic lunatic. Still just as dead, though._

"On the finance side of things, don't forget this fleet's budget."

"Ah? Oh, yes. That may just add enough to stretch. I don't care, there's no way I'm going to let the Dendarii be screwed over. They deserve better than that."

He remembered Elena's face when he'd told her he was conscripting the Dendarii as Imperial troops, and the light in her eyes as she'd asked, "For real, this time?" She had felt abandoned by Barrayar, even though she'd abandoned it first. Aunt Cordelia would no doubt have some pithy Betan comment on the subject, probably along the lines of people-eating planets.

The summer before he'd gone off to the Academy, when Miles and Ivan had been in the most obnoxious stage of puberty, he and fourteen-year-old Elena had formed a brief alliance. With hindsight, she'd probably had a crush on him, four years older and with the glamour of military school about him. Odd, to be nostalgic now for a time when he'd been secretly tired of the company of little kids. _I can't fail her and Miles; they didn't fail me._

"The grateful Vervani," Aral remarked, "have invited us for an official visit."

Gregor made a face. "Speeches? State dinners?"

"Your digestion is forty years younger and your metabolism is twice as fast."

"A small genetic gift," Gregor remarked. "D'you suppose they have retrogenes for it?"

Count Aral refused to be sidetracked. "Besides, I just did Pol. Your turn." His hand absently rubbed his stomach.

Gregor sighed. "Oh, well. At least I could leave Ungari behind. His sulking is starting to get on my nerves."

Count Aral grinned. "I meant to ask you, what did you do to the man? Your ImpSec tail doesn't usually go around glowering like that."

"I didn't do anything to him. It was all Miles. I suppose you depress him because you remind him that Miles is too well-connected to have skinned and stuffed."

The Count put his hand to his eyes. "What has Miles done now?"

"Oh, only locked up Ungari because he wouldn't do what Miles told him to. He was afraid Ungari would mess up his retrieving-me operation."

"Ah. He really has a severe insubordination problem. It's wearing out commanding officers rather fast." The corners of Aral's mouth twitched.

"He never obeys me; what chance does a mere ImpSec captain have with Miles when he has his C-in-C wrapped around his little finger?" Gregor asked, lifting his eyebrows.

"I suspect that in Miles's mind 'senior officer' has somehow become conflated with 'someone to crawl around the floor playing Human Ludo with'." Aral bit his knuckle, his laughter lines crinkling. "Mind you, his objective generally is recognisable, it's just the tactics are completely unorthodox."

"I can just hear him now. _Didn't you want Gregor rescued, Simon? I know you didn't actually ask me to stop a war with the Cetagandans, but it seemed like a good idea. Look at how Barrayar's status in the Hub has improved!_ Surely there must be some way of channelling all those, um, attributes into something useful, long-term? It's not as though he wasn't willing to serve Barrayar, after all."

The nebulous strands of a half-formed idea--_let's see what happens_--dispersed as Aral asked, "So how did Miles actually get you back? When I heard--" He broke off, his mouth setting grimly. "It seemed like the worst sort of hostage situation. The price the Cetas would be willing to pay for you has to be astronomical. Why didn't that woman try for it?"

"That's...what I thought, too." Gregor inhaled, revulsion returning. "So I upped the stakes. The whole Imperium."

"What?!"

"I let her think I would marry her," Gregor clarified.

"Ah?" said Count Aral, looking speculatively at him. Gregor felt himself blush. "And did it work?"

"Oh, yes." Gregor curled up, arms about his torso. He felt cold and shrunken, inwardly, as if he were invisibly bleeding cryo-fluid.

"What I was told about this would seem to have been a précis," said the Count, plainly fascinated. "Go on."

"Well, I'd been stringing her along, I didn't have a clue what was happening in the Hub, and then she told me that Miles was on the comm, chirping that he'd brought the Dendarii as reinforcements for her. Then I found he'd been telling Cavilo--oh, it was a masterpiecethat he was second in line to the Imperium, I wasn't the only potential bridegroom, she could have Miles instead--oh, yes, and that she wouldn't get around you by fluttering her eyelashes."

"Yes, I imagine Cordelia would have something to say about that," Aral murmured. _Cavilo versus the Countess_, Gregor thought. _I know who I'd be putting my money on._

"So, then?" Count Aral prompted.

"I told her that Miles's mutations had driven him insane--sorry--"

"_One_ part of that was right." Gregor recognised the Miles-induced half-bemused laugh.

"--and that he went about muttering Imperial plots to himself in corners, but was quite safe when he got his medication on time." Gregor mentally edited out the part about Miles's chances of future offspring. "And that the Vorkosigans liked being the power behind the throne--camp stool--rather than on it."

"The better placed for a stab in the back, no doubt." Aral was suffused.

"Anyway, we went aboard the _Ariel_, and she trusted me enough to leave me loose. We'd stuffed her up with so much rigmarole she didn't know how to think, I suppose. We ended up in a blind corridor, the shuttle blown out of its clamps behind us, facing down Elena and a plasma cannon."

"_Inside_ a spacecraft?"

"Yes, quite. Then Miles shouted, 'Drop your weapons or Gregor dies!', there was this one moment when everyone was completely croggled--"

"I recognise the style, yes," the Count choked.

"Except I've had twenty years of exposure to Miles-induced crogglement. So while Cavilo was still un-dropping her jaw, I said, 'Ha-ha, he's bluffing, watch,' and just walked forward until I hit the plasma cannon."

He sighed, remembering how clean and sane and familiar Miles and Elena had felt, like coming home. He'd felt like kissing Elena and hugging Miles hard enough to break bones, but the cannon had been off-putting.

"I think I even startled Miles," he added thoughtfully, "because it took him a couple of seconds to shut the blast doors behind me. It's not often I manage to blindside Miles." He grinned.

The Count wiped his eyes. "It's a good thing certain members of the Council of Counts didn't see Miles's sworn liege-woman pointing a large impressive weapon at you."

"Oh, it wasn't loaded," Gregor reassured him. "None of their weapons were. That piece of Barrayaran conditioning holds very strong." He thought of the Counts running at Vordrozda and his loaded needler.

"I might almost feel sorry for the woman. It sounds like you and Miles gave her a run for her money."

"Well, it was mostly Miles. I'm glad now that he gave me experience of someone with a thought process like a corkscrew. Although it was Cavilo's utter lack of loyalty to anyone other than herself that scuppered her, really." His tone turned bitter. "She was so busy stabbing everyone else in the back, she forgot to watch her own."

Count Aral gave Gregor one of his sharp looks. "Hmmm?"

It all came spilling out, then. "I didn't give her my name's word, but she thought that I had. I promised, and what's a form of words, anyway? She even said to me that she knew what the word of a Vor lord meant. And I needed her to trust me, because otherwise she'd have sold me to the Cetagandans." He lifted his eyes to Aral's, unhappily.

"Ah. Death before dishonour? Would you be forsworn, or a corpse?"

"Or a forsworn corpse. I took oath to protect and serve Barrayar, not dump another Cetagandan war on its doorstep, if I could avoid it. You might say: Barrayar's safety; another five million dead; what do Gregor Vorbarra's word and honour matter, compared to that?"

His mouth twisted in bitter self-loathing. He frowned at Aral's startled look.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said, and then, morbidly, with a little cold stab under the heart, "Whose?"

"Your grandfather looking out of your eyes, boy," Count Aral said. "Very big on expediency, old Ezar was. Men's lives and their honour, all material for--" He broke off.

Gregor shivered, intangible ice fingers on the back of his neck. _What did he ask of you, Aral Vorkosigan?_

"Don't go down that path, Gregor. I know you don't hold your honour cheap. But when all choices lead to dishonour--that's no choice at all."

"I could have chosen to not run away in the first place, I suppose."

"True. Though the results have been far from completely disastrous, even for you personally."

Gregor propped his chin on the back of the chair. "I wanted to be someone without so much depending on me...it crushes me, at times. But I found that the Emperor is not something I can lose. Did you ever want to escape, just get out of the whole complicated tangle of Barrayar and politics?"

A glint of amusement lit Count Aral's face. "Oh, yes. When I was separated from Cordelia, during the Escobar invasion, I used to have this fantasy of turning up on her doorstep on Beta Colony. I think I'd planned to be an unarmed combat instructor, as that was the only one of my skills I could have used there."

Gregor smiled. "All I got to do was put in light fittings. And I don't have a Cordelia to run to. I like your version better. When we go homewhere am I supposed to be at the minute, by the way? Vorkosigan Surleau?"

"ImpSec got hold of a young officer who looked like you, spun him a story of an assassination plot, and sent him off to the mountains. An eager volunteer, I might add."

Gregor gave a short laugh.

"I don't see what's so funny about loyalty," said the Count, deceptively mild.

"Oh, not that. It's just so bloody ironic; someone volunteering to be me."

"I believe I've told you before: reluctant rulers are less dangerous."

"Not even any time off for good behaviour," Gregor mourned. "Criminals get a better deal."

"How Betan of you to say so."

Gregor gave an acknowledging shrug. "When I go home, everyone's going to honour me for leading the defence against the Cetagandans. Not that I was anything but a passenger."

"All the best strategies are set up beforehand," the Count pointed out. "Trying to do it in the heat is much less efficient."

"Mmm. But I'll know what it cost me to get to that point, that I don't deserve honour."

"Ah. That. Can I make a distinction? Reputation is what others know about you, something external; honour is what you know about yourself, internal. When they don't matchwhen you receive public adulation while your honour lies in shards at your feetthat's a refined form of torture."

It was comforting to know that Count Aral had felt all this before him, rather than dismissing it. "Was that at Komarr?"

The Count smiled faintly. "It was a problem of short order. My reputation rapidly followed my honour into the dust." He paused. "It's like survivor's guilt. You have been bereaved of something real."

"So?" said Gregor, engrossed. "As one survivor to anotherhow do you live, afterwards?"

"Like most things in life, it passes. Honour is something living, not mechanical. It can heal, like the rest of you, given time." He smiled ruefully. "You're probably tired of hearing counsels of patience from an old man, but it's all I have to offer."

Gregor shook his head. "No, I'm not." _You should have been an orator on Beta, in your escape-dream._

"By the way," Count Aral said, as the silence lengthened, "not everyone at home will be fêting you, you know. Some of us don't have the public image to get in our way."

Gregor flinched at the thought of the lectures probably awaiting him from Simon Illyan, Lady Alys, Cordelia, Drou...

"You left out something, sir. Honour and reputationwhat do you call what your friends know about you?"

Count Aral considered, and smiled at Gregor. "I call that love, boy."


	2. Part II: Cordelia

The maid was new; she kept looking covertly at Gregor, blushing, and almost dropping the coffee cups. Gregor removed his Imperial self, hoping that would help the process along, and looked out of the window at the garden. When he finally got his cup, he curled down on the rug beside Cordelia's chair, the way he used to when he was small.

"I'm almost wishing Miles back six wormholes away," Cordelia said, sipping her coffee. "If you'd told me that this time last week, I wouldn't have believed you. He's been bouncing off the ceiling, these last few days."

"Is that unusual?" Gregor asked innocently. Cordelia ignored the jibe.

"No-one but Miles," she said, "could raise an army _by accident_. Are you sure that letting him keep them is a good idea? What might he inadvertently acquire next? The Cetagandan Empire?"

Gregor's mind boggled, briefly, at the thought of his empire expanding to four times its size, before refusing altogether to contemplate the prospect. "In that case, I'd do what I did with the Dendarii. 'You keep them, Miles.'" He added, in response to Cordelia's raised eyebrows, "It's what he's wanted all his life. Command of five thousand Barrayaransort oftroops by the age of twenty-one."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Cordelia murmured.

"It'll be all right," Gregor said, as firmly as he could manage. "The means are...um...unusual, but the ends are good."

"A rational government wouldn't let Miles run a picnic," Cordelia said, half-laughing.

Gregor recalled certain picnics that had involved Miles. "I'm the government, remember," he said softly, setting his cup on the floor. "How rational am I?" There it was, the crux of all his fears.

She looked him in the face. "What's this about, Gregor?"

"You lied to me." The words seemed to drop straight to his tongue from his subconscious, where they had been lurking, insidious little monsters, throughout the last weeks. "About my father. What he was."

A lesser woman might have evaded, or defended herself, because the lies had only been by omission and implication, but not Cordelia Vorkosigan. Without dropping her eyes from Gregor's she said, "Yes, we did. I'm sorry. Sorry for the reason for it, too."

"When were you going to tell me, when I was fifty? Even Miles knew, and I didn't!"

"We didn't tell Miles either. He found out independently."

"How?" Gregor said shortly. Something seemed to be going wrong with his breathing.

"He met one of the victims."

"When?" Were they on Barrayar, too? Watching him, waiting for him to show the first signs that he, too, was a monster?

"On his last little...adventure with his mercenaries. She'd been an Escobaran ensign, in the war."

"Oh." What did she and the others think, when they saw him on the news vids? Did they look for his father in his face? Gregor felt cold nausea in the pit of his stomach. "I need to know what happened, in the war. You know, don't you? You and Count Aral were there in the middle of everything."

"Yes. Aral had been offered command of the fleet, but he turned it down. He didn't approve of the invasion from a military perspective. That was why Ges Vorrutyer and Prince Serg were in charge." She was picking her words slowly. "They saw the invasion as an opportunity. At home on Barrayar, the old Emperor kept a tight rein. He had an enormous amount of control, even though he was dying. Besides, there were the Counts, and the people--it wasn't so very long since Mad Yuri's War."

"Yes," Gregor murmured, dry-mouthed. "There's a limit to how far an Emperor's absolute power is tolerated, even on Barrayar."

"Is that a visceral reality for you, or only a mental one?"

Gregor swallowed. "When I think about the stories I got--How Uncle Aral Took The First Cut From Great-Uncle Mad Yuri--it does go to the guts."

Cordelia mouthed something he guessed was _Barrayarans_. "I believe your mother held the opinion that Ges Vorrutyer had corrupted Prince Serg. Aral thought Serg was worse. Personally, I think the corruption was mutual. Friendships are like that; they concentrate what's already there, both the good and the bad."

"Why did Aral think that? I wouldn't have thought he'd have given any of the Vorrutyers the benefit of the doubt, not after what happened with his wife."

"Where did you hear about that?" Cordelia asked, resignedly.

"Byerly Vorrutyer. Naturally."

Suddenly, facts coalesced in Gregor's head like a landslide. "C-Cordelia, that s-story about Aral and Admiral Vorrutyer beingerI thought it was just slander--but then, I thought that about the other, too." He took a breath. No indignant denial from Cordelia. "Is it true? But he loves you!"

The idea of Aral having settled for Cordelia, presumably for the sake of a Vorkosigan heir, was shockingly disturbing. He had thought he'd already had all the emotional grenades that could be thrown at him.

"Oh, yes," said Cordelia with Betan briskness, "he's bisexual."

"The things you don't know about your parents," Gregor said, flippant with relief, as his world-view settled back on to its foundations again. His words didn't catch up with him till a second or two later, too late to look for a reaction from Cordelia.

"Is that going to bother you, Gregor? I know what traditional Barrayaran views on it are."

"It's not that, it's...Vorrutyer. I mean, a, a, a sadistic madman, and then _you_?"

"Oh, it's Aral's _taste_ you're questioning," said Cordelia, with a transitory glint of humour. "Perhaps you should talk to him about--"

"No," Gregor said, with what he hoped was finality.

Cordelia sighed. "No, I can't imagine either of you initiating that conversation."

She sipped her coffee. "Thank heaven for escaping the abysmal decisions we make when we're young and stupid. Aral was very young when his wife committed suicide, and very reckless and unhappy--'suicide by obnoxiousness' I believe was the phrase he used. Ever been so miserable that you didn't care whether you lived or died?"

_Ow_.

"Don't underestimate the power of a shared history, and, um, availability. Aral had known Vorrutyer since they were in the Academy, and of course they were some sort of cousins anyway. He was a soldier, too, and considering Barrayaran obsession on that point--"

"Oh, I see," Gregor said. "'Dear Captain'?"

"Yes, exactly," Cordelia said, giving Gregor a clever-boy glance.

"I can understand that. Helplessness and--and passivity don't attract me either."

"I knew all those girls were wasting their time acting the wilting flower of Vor womanhood at you."

"Was she like that? Veronika Vorrutyer?"

"I don't know. I remember Aral saying once, that he wouldn't have thought a plasma arc a woman's weapon... I don't know what effect her death had on Ges Vorrutyer; by the time I met him, he was so fixated on revenging himself on Aral that he only remembered his sister as Aral's appendage. He had deteriorated over the years, according to Aral. He was just an unpleasant voyeur, back then. Harmless in comparison to what came later, by the time of the war."

"And?" was all Gregor could manage. He felt as though he was about to be sick on the Vorkosigans' library carpet.

Cordelia inhaled audibly, and said, as clinically as a Betan therapist, "They broke their prisoners, body, mind and soul, for no reason other than their own pleasure. A delight in destruction, torture as a work of art...Vorrutyer used to pick out the pretty young women from among the prisoners, and work on each for some time. He'd use some of the soldiers--they picked them out too, the ones that already had a twist, to bring down to their level. Vorrutyer had his team rape the prisoners, to start off, then he'd move on to physical damage--some of the women died. The luckier ones.  
"The Prince liked his victims pregnant. Vorrutyer used to have their contraceptive implants removed, and after he'd finished with them--if they were still alive--hand them over to the Prince for more--"

"Stop. Please." The room seemed to be closing in as physical panic surged through Gregor's body. He leaned his forehead against the arm of Cordelia's chair, open eyes sightless against the brocade. He fought his shaking muscles to get a steady breath.

"Too much truth?" He could hear the pain of compassion in Cordelia's voice. "You did ask."

"I'd been hoping that was one of the lies." He felt Cordelia's hand against the back of his bowed head, long cool fingers stroking his hair. "Were there...surviving babies?"

"Whenever the Escobarans regained their prisoners, their surgeons transferred the foetuses to uterine replicators. They shot seventeen of them straight back to the Barrayarans."

"What happened to them?" _Do I have half-siblings walking around somewhere? Please, no. _

"Imperial Service Orphanage, mostly. Aral saw that they were provided for... That was where the replicator for Miles came from, if you want to think about good from evil. There were none on Barrayar before that."

"Why did no-one stop them? People must have known what was going on," Gregor said, his mind reaching in an agony to wipe it out, make it have happened another way. His thoughts made a sudden zigzag. "I can't let anything like that happen in my military!"

"No," Cordelia agreed. "Aral found it easier to reform the army as Lord Regent than as Commodore Vorkosigan running around with a plasma arc."

The recognition that had been lurking at the corners of Gregor's mind suddenly came into focus: he was listening to an eyewitness account. He lifted his head.

"You were the Barrayarans' prisoner in the war," he said. He mustn't have been able to let himself think it before; that the woman who had taught him mathematics and talked him out of his nightmares and rescued him from Vordarian's troops, carried him in her arms, had been tortured and raped by his father or his cronies.

"My acquaintance with Admiral Vorrutyer was mercifully brief," Cordelia said dryly. "I wasn't raped, and he ended up with his throat cut."

"Ah. I recognise the _modus operandi_." He shivered.

"Hadn't you ever heard that rumour before? Actually, it was not my hand. Then, as later, it was Bothari's. That was one of the bravest things I've ever seen."

"I should think it would be. And--what about my father?"

"I only saw him once, in a mirror, when I was hiding in Aral's cabin."

Gregor shivered again. He knew it was hypocritical to be relieved because he wouldn't have to know one of his father's victims, wouldn't have to look at Cordelia with that inherited guilt, but he felt relieved, all the same.

"I used to wish, when I was small, that he hadn't died at Escobar. Then my mother would have lived and I would have had parents. I see now that it's the best thing that could have happened. I remember Grandfather telling me--he must have been thrilled, really. All that intriguing my father did, just to get _himself_ killed." His breath hitched. "Ezar was giving him rope, wasn't he?"

"You can do the math as well as I can," said Cordelia grimly.

"I'm kind of glad he isn't around to ask _how much_."

Cordelia's eyes rested on him, measuringly. "I'm sorry that we mishandled you over this, love. I never could think of a good time to break that to you, and we'd hoped that you would never have to know it."

Five years ago, when he'd been newly come into his majority, and reckless and terrified together? Four, when he'd been getting his first lessons in power-hungry maniacs? _Thank you, Count Vordrozda, for that service._ No.

_You asked for the truth,_ his Betan-trained internal editor pointed out ruthlessly. _So now you know, and there isn't anything worse. Please, nothing worse._

"I have to tell you something now." He hadn't been sure he could confess this, and he'd better get it over before he lost his nerve. He hadn't given his word as to _when_ he would talk to Cordelia. "I didn't exactly fall over that balcony on Komarr. I was on the point of jumping."

"Ah." Cordelia closed her eyes briefly. She didn't look surprised, Gregor noted darkly. Distressed, but not surprised. "My poor lamb."

"The sacrificial variety, you mean?...I was dithering about when I took a nose-drive over the edge. There were some creepers or something that I managed to grab. Once I was on the ground, it occurred to me that there was more than one way to kill an Emperor."

"I kept thinking that you weren't nearly cold-blooded enough to premeditatedly walk off without leaving word, even if it meant you wouldn't get away clear. That was what convinced me something had happened to you. And on Komarr, of all the disastrous political scenarios. I was extremely annoyed when I found out that you had walked off under your own power. Now I have reverted to being extremely anxious."

"Sorry, I'm sorry, I never meant to hurt you, or Aral or Drou or Simon--" He put his hands up to his forehead as a shield. He'd given up trying to control his face somewhere near the start of the conversation, but the corners of his eyes were smarting.

"Gregor..." Cordelia said, a thin edge to her voice. She broke off, and her hand came to cradle his head again. Long pause, as Gregor's desolation ebbed back to manageable size.

"...are you still suicidal?" Cordelia had regained her clinical tone.

"No." He tried to look back objectively at those moments on the balcony. "I just wanted to get out. For everything to stop. Those domes were giving me claustrophobia anyway...and it seemed better to die like that than later, of slow madness, or the way Yuri did."

"Had you just found out about Prince Serg?" Cordelia asked, eyes sharp.

"Yes. I wasn't thinking very straight, then. And I was drunk, too."

"Ah. Maudlin," Cordelia diagnosed. She'd seen Gregor drunk before. "It probably would be more enjoyable for you if you keeled over at three glasses, like Miles."

"I don't think anaesthesia is a good idea, really." He sighed. "I think I'm all right now. Back to normal, playing my part in the Vor illusion."

"Construct," Cordelia corrected. "I've revised my ideas."

"It...weighs enough to be real. There's a small irrational part of me that thinks I've lost my only chance to escape. But I carried Barrayar with me. It would be like trying to escape from my own shadow."

"Barrayar eats its children," Cordelia said drearily. "You most of all. Am I the only one who you've told about this?"

"Miles, too. That's everyone."

"Did he send you to me?"

"He said he knows when he's out of his depth."

"He does?" said Cordelia, plainly dubious.

"That's what I said, too. He told me that he just never admits it."

"Huh."

Gregor remembered how calmly Miles had taken his confession, as though jumping from a height were something as normal as Ivan making a fool of himself over a girl. He decided not to share that thought with Cordelia. _I wonder how many times Miles has tried it?_

"Listen, kiddo, any time you need to talk about this, or feel like jumping off any more balconies, come to me, all right? We haven't stopped our caring for you just because you grew up, you know. Promise?"

"My word as Vorbarra." He pulled at a few loose threads in the upholstery of the chair. "I'm no longer concerned that I only have a puppet power--I think Aral and I have that one finally sorted out now. What worries me now is how to handle it."

"Do you understand, now, why Aral was reluctant both to take the Regency and to release it?"

"Yes. Oh, yes. I'm very glad he's not retiring to Vorkosigan Surleau yet. I need my backup."

"I think you've learned well. Thank heaven you turned out to be intelligent. And willing to use your mind. I don't know what we'd have done with an Ivan. And you seem much more, er, confident, since you came back home."

"That was partly the battle--knowing that I had the courage to be in a real action, not just a mascot. Oh, don't look at me like that, I can't help being Barrayaran. Anyway, it was being able to prevent a full-scale war, too, with a lot of help, of course. And--several other things. Oh, actually directing Miles's energies into something useful, for once."

Cordelia snorted. "You'll have to give me lessons on that one."

An answering smile, unbelievably, twitched at the corners of Gregor's mouth. He reached still, greedy for more reassurance. "But I'm only twenty-five, Cordelia. There are years and years yet for me to go mad, even if I'm fine at the minute."

"Aral said to me once that madmen weren't the cause of Barrayar's history, but its result."

"Well, that gets me coming _and_ going. At least we finally have gene-scanning, so my sons can start out sane. If the geneticists can work out which bit is the hereditary insanity, among the messed-up Vor genome."

"Galactic medicine does have other areas, you know." She looked at him probingly.

"The Emperor of Barrayar in Betan therapy? No. That one is most definitely out."

He heard her mutter, "Barrayarans!" with the inflection that turning it into swearing, but continued doggedly, "How much good could therapy do anyway? I can't stop being Emperor, and it's a bit late now to sort out my genetics. Do you realise that I'm the only descendant of Dorca's first Empress who hasn't, so far, gone insane? My father, Mad Yuri, Seriously Annoyed Empress Annalise, and me."

Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Seriously Annoyed? Who thought up that?"

"Miles."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Cordelia made a face.

"We were pretty young...Mad Yuri and Seriously Annoyed Annalise...Ivan wanted Slightly Crazy instead, but Miles won, as usual. She wasn't their grandmother. I haven't got to the point of killing my relatives yet--although I do wish that Yuri had paid a little more attention to _Vordarian's_ succession theory--but I'm possibly getting a little paro about, well..."

"Paranoia seems an entirely reasonable reaction to being born on this planet," Cordelia said, with an edged smile.

"Sometimes everyone really is out to get you?" Gregor said. "If I could think _Miles_ was betraying me--" Thinking about Vordrozda's plot still made him squirm inwardly, one of the things that he wanted to go back and do right this time, when he woke at three in the morning.

"Yuri sent assassination teams," Cordelia said sharply. "You call a trial by peers, even if they are those bloody-minded old goats in the Council. And Aral wasn't the only one being torn apart by it. Credit me with having eyes."

"Oh," Gregor said. He seemed to be forgiven on that score at any rate. "Can you drive yourself mad worrying about going mad? I can't stop thinking about the torture and the rapes. What if that's how it begins?"

Cordelia sighed. "Gregor, whatever else is going on in your head, you are not a sadist. Believe me, if you'd ever shown any sign of it, there _would_ have been therapy, Emperor or no Emperor.

"Secondly, genetics aren't destiny. You said it yourself earlier; in everything but biology, Aral is your father. The whole of your upbringing is different from--any of your ancestors, in fact."

_You're the difference_, Gregor thought. _Taught me to know myself, to hold back my soul so the job doesn't eat it alive--_ That was something to be thought about, later.

"Thirdly, I haven't heard you mention your mother yet. I checked once; her family has no inherited insanity, and she had no common ancestors with Prince Serg for seven generations."

Gregor's eyes widened. "Of all the cold-blooded bastards! Grandfather must have picked her out deliberately, to get a bit of out-breeding in the family tree. It's, it's obscene! It's like the old Count and his horses! I wondered how Mama ever--What if I turn out to be Ezar instead? He used to scare me when I was tiny, though I never dared to show it. He used to look at me...looking for my father, I suppose. I see now why he kept Mama and me with him from when I was born--"

"Conceived, actually."

"Oh. Yes." Gregor swallowed the sick taste in his throat. "You can see where it comes from, can't you? The Vorrutyer taint. What's the phrase--mad, bad and dangerous to know? They've always been sadists and torturers. I bet old Pierre le Sanguinaire didn't get his nickname just for what he did in Dorca's war on the Counts. Then there was Yuri, my father, the Admiral... As for the current lot, the Count's bizarre, I trust Richars as far as I could throw him, and his father wasn't much better. I mean, that twit Byerly is one of the sanest; that says it all, doesn't it?"

"Oh, come on, Gregor, you're over-generalising. The Vorrutyers don't all turn out to be like Ges. The mad architect--well, I suppose those hideous buildings might count as a form of torture. Your grandmother was perfectly harmless, if...not quite in the same reality as most people. Lots of them only go reclusive, like the current Count and Lord What's-his-name, the youngest brother. Some of them even are normal, or what passes for normal on Barrayar."

"Yes, but even the ones like Byerly and Lady Donna have that unpleasant sense of humour, a delight in needling people. It's a miniature version of the same thing."

"Now you're just panicking," Cordelia said bracingly. "Unless you're suggesting that Ivan's a Vorrutyer."

"He's just incompetent at needling," Gregor said. Something in his memory clicked, and he asked, "Is it actually true about Ivan and Lady Donna?"

Cordelia nodded. "Since both of them appear to spend their lives screwing half of Vorbarr Sultana, it had to happen some time, I suppose."

"Eh...more than half, in Donna's case."

"Is that from personal experience? You don't have to answer that."

"No, I was twitchy about screwing my third cousins even before this. It was in an ImpSec report, actually."

"Ah, our ubiquitous friends. I must check under my bed in future."

Gregor grinned. "Unless it has the Escobaran ambassador's wife in it, ImpSec won't be interested."

"Well, perhaps Donna will be the one to settle down with a nice girl, then. Alys is afraid that Donna's intending Ivan for husband number three."

"I really don't think that's what Ivan has in mind," Gregor breathed. He glanced up at Cordelia, one eyebrow lifting. "How does he do it? Any woman he chooses...and I get gawky debutantes with Vor dragons lurking at their elbows, and a power-mad backstabber with a personality like a shark and a mind as twisty as--well, Miles."

"Ah. Aral told me about the mercenary commander."

Gregor brooded. He hadn't wanted her, really, only the potential of her, her negative image, the blacks white. "She pretended to be in love with me. I'd have preferred honest greed. I had her number from the start--you know that look people have, when they get the Imperium in their sights?"

"Vordarian, Vordrozda, various Vor matrons intent on becoming your mother-in-law? Yes."

"I'm starting to think I shan't ever have a mother-in-law. All those girls want to marry the Emperor, not Gregor Vorbarra. I'm a convenient route to power and status. I don't want to look at my wife and see a Cavilo."

"What you need, love," Cordelia said, "is a woman who sees the Imperium as a disadvantage rather than an incentive."

"In that case she probably wouldn't marry me at all."

"If she loves you, she will," Cordelia said firmly. It was the reassuring voice of his childhood, and still trustworthy, even though he knew he was conditioned to believe it.

"I hope I won't have to wait as long as Count Aral did. I don't fancy twenty more years of Lady Alys's matchmaking. Or Ivan's." He shuddered. "Anyway, where do I look? The Vor are all related to me. Marrying a prole isn't exactly feasible, either. Can you imagine getting Lady Alys to organise it, for a start? Or the Counts putting their hands between hers? There'd be another coup."

"Look off-planet," Cordelia advised dryly.

"Like Aral? The Counts faced with a Betan Empress--half of the Conservatives would drop dead on the spot."

He looked up to meet Cordelia's eyes, which were alight with imagination. "What a _tempting_ prospect," she breathed.

"Vortrifrani would burst, I should think," Gregor said. He tore his mind from this entrancing vision with an effort.

"Being used in a relationship isn't confined to Emperors, you know. I don't suppose that's much comfort to you at present, but bear it in mind."

Gregor wondered whether it would be unethical to send an ImpSec covert assassination team to track down the man, woman or herm who had put that ring of conviction in Cordelia's voice. "You don't think I'm wrong to hold out for more. Probably you're the only person on Barrayar who does. I've started getting pointed comments about little Vorbarras."

"From Ivan and Miles, I suppose?"

"And assorted other heirs. And Lady Alys. And Drou. And Simon. And my Armsmen, dammit."

Cordelia chuckled. "They used to talk about women having a biological clock. You seem to have a political one."

"I don't know if I can face saddling my son with my job. What right have I to do that?"

"You're asking me that?" Cordelia said bleakly.

"Miles seems to be doing all right," Gregor offered tentatively. "Surprisingly competent, in a, um, off-the-wall kind of way."

He thought of Miles, a test subject released from the controlled--sort of--environment of Vorbarr Sultana and the Academy into the wild of the Nexus. His mouth twitched. _This could be interesting. Will be interesting. Possibly in the Ancient Chinese sense._

"You've got that experimental light in your eyes again," Cordelia said. "The inhabitants of Barrayar, you know, would be very disconcerted if they realised that their Emperor regarded them as a sort of giant chemistry set."

"Well, you know who taught me to think that way," Gregor retorted.

"Oh, I was observing, not passing judgment," she replied. "A certain amount of detachment is healthy. Besides, it beats 'toy soldiers' any day."

"But we're conditioned to be soldiers," Gregor said. "Everyone's used to that."

He thought privately that the Countess's impromptu psychoanalysis was as disconcerting as any attitude of his. _Who needs Betan therapy when Aunt Cordelia's around?_ He felt as though he'd had his mind washed, brushed, shaken out and handed neatly back to him.

There was a cursory knock, and Miles bounced in. By some telepathic process, he somehow drew the beholder's eye to his brand-new red collar tabs.

"Mother, do--oh, hello, Gregor." A profound relief, presumably at the shift of responsibility for Gregor Jumping Off Things from his shoulders to his mother's, modulated Miles's general expression of extreme enthusiasm.

"Such joy in life," Cordelia murmured. "Are we to understand that Simon has given you something to do, or are you merely airing your uniform?" Her eyes met Gregor's, the corners of her mouth carefully tucking in.

"There's no need to laugh at me," Miles said with dignity. "I'm on my way to ImpSec HQ now, actually."

One didn't live long in Barrayaran Vor politics without acquiring the ability to control one's expression. Gregor and Cordelia looked at Miles, and then at each other. Miles sighed, audibly.

"It's nice to see you enjoying yourself, Gregor," he said benevolently.

Gregor wondered briefly whom he was imitating, before being overwhelmed with thankfulness that Miles hadn't come in during the earlier part of the conversation. He could talk to Cordelia and he could talk to Miles, but not both at once. _Interesting family conversation for three_, he thought. For a few seconds he had an intense image of what _family conversation_ might have been like for him if things had happened otherwise, at Escobar. But there were enough real horrors without inventing more, so he shoved the imagining firmly out of sight.

Miles was babbling over-excitedly in the background, Cordelia giving cool ironic replies. An immense affection, a fervent relief at the familiarity of it, rose up behind Gregor's breastbone. _They never change_, Gregor thought, with a private inward grin. He was home.


End file.
